October 14, 2015

The Oddest Thing About Apple.

There is something striking about the phenomenal success of Apple.

It's something that sensible, non-delusional marketers should take note of.

Despite being the world's premier technology company, and one of the world's most successful online transactional marketers (the iTunes store), the overwhelming majority of Apple's advertising money is spent on traditional advertising -- TV, outdoor, and print.

They use the web brilliantly for their "below the line" stuff. But their advertising is almost exclusively of the traditional variety.

I've only ever seen one banner ad for Apple. I've never seen a Facebook "sponsored post." I don't believe they have a Twitter feed.

Mostly, all they do is that dead old TV and outdoor and print stuff. Yet somehow they've managed to survive and, oh yeah, become the world's most valuable company.

What have the wizards of the marketing and advertising industry learned from this?

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Ad Contrarian Says:

"Shakespeare was a storyteller. You're a copywriter.""Good ads appeal to us as consumers. Great ads appeal to us as humans."

"Social Media: Tens of millions of disagreeable people looking to make trouble."

"As an ad medium, the web is a much better yellow pages and a much worse television."

"Sometimes success in the advertising business requires sitting quietly and letting clients proceed with their hysterical delusions."

"Marketers prefer precise answers that are wrong to imprecise answers that are right."

"Brand studies last for months, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and generally have less impact on business than cleaning the drapes."

"The idea that the same consumer who was frantically clicking her TV remote to escape from advertising was going to merrily click her mouse to interact with it is going to go down as one of the great advertising delusions of all time."

"Nobody really knows what "creativity" is. Every year thousands of people take a pilgrimage to find out. This involves flying to Cannes, snorting cocaine, and having sex with smokers."

"Marketers habitually overestimate the attraction of new things and underestimate the power of traditional consumer behavior."

"We don’t get them to try our product by convincing them to love our brand. We get them to love our brand by convincing them to try our product."

"In American business, there is nothing stupider than the previous generation of management."

"If the message is right, who cares what screen people see it on? If the message is wrong, what difference does it make?"

"The only form of product information on the planet less trustworthy than advertising is the shrill ravings of web maniacs."

"There's no bigger sucker than a gullible marketer convinced he's missing a trend."

"All ad campaigns are branding campaigns. Whether you intend it to be a branding campaign is irrelevant. It will create an impression of your brand regardless of your intent."

"Nobody ever got famous predicting that things would stay pretty much the same."